I was out in Sunnyvale, CA this weekend visiting my mom, and one of our stops while out cruising around was to see the Apple corporate headquarters just a couple minutes away in Cupertino. I'm still not sure how my mom has lived in California for a year now and never once mentioned, "Oh, by the way, did I tell you I'm 10 minutes away from Apple?" Hello? I was a bit in awe about the whole thing... I felt like a six year old walking into Chuck E. Cheese for the first time. For a few minutes all was right in the world. It was a bit surreal to finally see the place that has effectively hypnotized me into willingly and eagerly handing over my future children's college funds just to have the latest, shiniest, coolest gadget with an Apple logo on it. I'm not ashamed to admit it... Apple has brainwashed me and I'm proud of it. I've been a card-carrying member of the Mac cult for 12 years now, and I'm pretty sure I bought the lifetime membership. If Apple announced tomorrow they were making washers and dryers, I'd be in line to pick a pair up when they came out because I'm sure they'd find some way to make it cool where I'd want to do laundry.

And here's the mother ship where all things cool are dreamed up.

We found some trash cans around back, so after the security guard drove outta site I went on a quick reconnaissance mission hoping to find a few iPhone spares or maybe a couple MacBook laptops thrown out with dixie cups from the water cooler. No such luck, but I did find a third of a pastrami on rye sandwich, so it wasn't a complete loss.

We went into the company store and I pulled up my flickr account photos on the Apple TV and HD display they had set up in the store before we exited stage right. I was hoping Steve Jobs would swing by, see the photos and want to book a session. No phone calls yet, but I think he might have been out of the office today, so hopefully he'll call tomorrow. Here's a quick photo I snatched with my iPhone.

Stay tuned for more images from our travels in CA.